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HISTORY OF POCAHONTAS COUNTY 311

and their two sons, John and Adam, are about all of
Captain Young’s descendants—of his name—in the
county, with whose history he was so prominently
identified for so many years. •

Colonel Samuel Young, whose memory was recently
honored by a large outpouring of the citizens.at the
Sulphur Spring, Sunday, May 3, 1894,—according to
an appointment made forty years before, that if alive,
he would meet them there that day—was his second
son. He was a local preacher, and afterwards an offi¬
cer in the Union army. He did not live to meet his
unique appointment, and among those who assembled
forty years after, there were eleven who were present
at the original meeting, which was a preaching service
in the open air, a large rock serving for a pulpit.

ADAM CURRY

A generation since, one of the best known charac¬
ters in West Highland, Virginia, was Captain Adam
Curry, a Revolutionary veteran. One of his grand¬
sons, William Curry, is a well known citizen of Poca¬
hontas County.

Captain Curry was a native of Scotland, and came
to America, and resided several years near Manasses
Junction. He was among the first to enlist in the war
of the Revolution, ond was chosen captain of his com¬
pany, and participated in all the engagements in which
Virginia troops were engaged that followed Mercer
and Washington.

Soon after the war he gathered up the remnants of

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312 HISTORY OF POCAHONTAS COUNTY

his property and moved to Augusta County, locating
in the Back ( reek valley on property now owned by
William ( rummett in southwest Highland. He settled
in the woods and raised a large family of sons and
daughters. He was honest in his dealings, and was
held in much esteem for. his high sense of honor and
patriotic impulses. It seems almost too strange to be
believed that he would not accept a pension, offered
him for his services as a brave and faithful officer in
the Revolutionary struggle. He always declared that
the service was its own reward. Instead of being a
hardship, military service was the greatest pleasure of
his life. He desired no better recompense than the
fun he had, and the pleasure it gave him to see liberty
secured for his invaded country. He was proverbially
neat in dress and polished in his manners. To the
close of his life, some forty or fifty years ago, he
dressed in the colonial style—knee breeches, long
stockings, and shoes with silver buckles.

He retained his habits of court life as to diet and
sleeping as long as he lived. He died at the age of
one hundred and five years, with but few signs of de¬
crepitude visible. To the last he was erect as a young
grenadier, cheerful in spirit, and mental faculties
active apparently as ever. His remains are in the
Matheny grave yard, near the Rehobeth Church, in
the Back Valley, a few miles from his home.

A European traveler spent some time near Manasses,
where Captain Curry lived before his removal to High¬
land. He speaks of meeting a party of gentlemen on
a tavern porch: “No people could exceed these peo-

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HI8T0RY OF POCAHONTAS COUNTY

318

pie in politeness. On my ascending tl.e steps to tbe
piazza every countenance seemed to say, ‘This man has
a double claim to our attention, for he is a stranger in
the place. ’ In a moment there was room made for me
to sit down, and every one who addressed me did it
with a smile of conciliation. But no man asked me
where I had come or whither I was going. A gentle¬
man in every country is the same; and if good breed¬
ing consists in sentiment, it was found in the circle I
had got into. The higher Virginians seemed to vener¬
ate themselves as men; and I am persuaded there was
not one in company who would have felt embarrassed
at being admitted to the presence and conversation of
the greatest monarch on earth. There is a compound
of virtue and vice in every human character; no man
was ever yet faultless; but whatever may be advanced
against Virginians, their good qualities will ever out¬
weigh their defects, and when the effervescence of
youth is abated—when reason asserts her empire—
there*is no man on earth who discovers more exalted
sentiments, more contempt of baseness, more love of
justice, more sensibility of feeling than a Virginian.”

Having lived for years in such society, we are pre¬
pared to believe all that has been written and told of
Captain Adam Curry.

Late in the summer of 1861, scrme Confederate
troops, commanded by Colonel William L. Jackson,
were stationed at Huntersville, and used the Clerk’s
office for barracks. In the place of straw they scatter¬
ed the office papers pell-mell on the floor and spread
their blankets. It also became apparent the Federals

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314

HISTORY OF POCAHONTA8 COUNTY

would soon e>ter the place, and so the court directed
their clerk, W illiam Curry, to look out a safe place for
the county records.

In obedience to instructions, he secured the assist¬
ance of R. W. Hill, then a youth too young for mili¬
tary service, with a team. The clerk removed the
records to Joel Hill’s residence, near Hillsboro, where
they remained until January, 1862 % Deeming it neces¬
sary to seek a safer place, Mr Curry arranged for the
transportation of the records to Covington, via Lewis-
burg, young R. W. Hill teamster. For a time quar¬
ters were had in the upper rooms of William Scott's
store house, and afterwards for a few weeks room was
furnished in the county clerk’s office.

September, 1853, on General Averill’s approach to
Covington, Mr Curry carried the records to William
T. Clark’s, eight miles north of Covington, and for
three weeks had them concealed in a rick of buckwheat
straw. The buckwheat patch was in the midst of a
forest and well hidden from view.

Matters became so threatening that arrangements
were made to made to move them into the mountains,
four miles east, to the residence of a Baptist minister,
absent as a soldier in the Confederate army, leaving
his home in the care of his wife and small girl as sole
occupants. He was assisted in this removal to the
louely mountain refuge by Andy Daugherty, one of
Mr Clark’s colored men. Andy afterwards became a
citizen of Pocahontas, and lived at Clover Lick. He
deserves recognition for his fidelity, because for two
years the safety of the records depended on his not

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315

telling about them.

In June, 1865, after surrender at Appomattox, Mr
Curry, assisted by John B. Kinnison, with a three
horse team, carried the records back to Joel Hill’s and
in a month later placed them in a nearby house be¬
longing to the Rev Mitchell D. Dunlap, where they re¬
mained until September, 1865. The first court after
the war was held at Hillsboro, November, 1865, in
the Methodist church; and from that time the records
were kept in the old Academy building until
June, 1866, when they were returned to Hunters¬
ville and placed in the residence of John Garvey, near
the court house, and then after a few months were re¬
placed in the office. Something more than five years
intervened between the first removal and the final re¬
turn of the records, and notwithstanding the risks en¬
countered and the vicissitudes of war times, nothing
was lost but an old process book of no intrinsic im¬
portance. This loss is believed to have occurred while
the office was in use as Confederate barracks.

So far as known there is no other like instance of
fidelity to official duty that surpasses the preservation
of the Pocahontas County records. There were ten
removals in all, from first to last, and when returned
six months were spent in assorting and replacing the
papers.

iohn McLaughlin.

For the past seventy-five or eighty years the Mc¬
Laughlin name has been a familiar one among our peo-

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